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July 23, 2004/Av 5 5764, Vol. 56, No. 44
Tisha B'Av
Remember the darkness
JANE ULMAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
In the blazing heat of mid-summer, with its long, light-filled days and leisurely pace, we confront the darkest day on the Jewish calendar, Tisha B'Av.
This holiday, which begins this year at sundown on Monday, July 26, marks the destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem, the fall of the Betar fortress to the Romans, the expulsion of Jews from Spain and other tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people throughout history.
In many ways, Tisha B'Av is the inverse of Hanukkah, a holiday of lights that occurs during the darkest days of winter.
"At the moment of light, we have to remember darkness, and at the moment of darkness, we have to remember light," says Sharon Brous, rabbi of Ikar, a new spiritual community in Los Angeles that is both traditional and progressive.
But unlike Hanukkah, one of the most celebrated Jewish holidays in the United States, Tisha B'Av is commemorated primarily by observant Jews and children at Jewish summer camps.
Are the rest of us missing an important opportunity? Does the demise of the Temple and, for some, the desire for its return have meaning for us almost 2,000 years later?
"There is a movement in religion today toward greater consciousness and symbolic understanding," says J. Marvin Spiegelman, an author and Jungian analyst in private practice in the Los Angeles area. "I think when we say we want to rebuild the Temple, we mean that we want to make it real psychologically."
But before the Temple can be rebuilt, psychologically or otherwise, we need to come to terms with the forces that caused the devastation. As the Talmud tells us, "Why was the First Temple destroyed? Because of idolatry, incest and the spilling of blood within it. And why the second? Because of senseless hatred."
In other words, because of the forces of darkness that reside within human beings.
Unlike Yom Kippur, in which we concentrate on individual sins, Tisha B'Av focuses on the collective evil, the darkness or shadow that dwells within a whole community or nation, and the wreckage it can engender.
"There's a sense, though, that the world is particularly off-kilter now," Spiegelman says.
Thus, the need to recognize the darkness is even more crucial.
"Ultimately Tisha B'Av is about emerging from the darkness into something much more whole," Brous says.
To do this, both Brous and Spiegelman see power in the time-honored traditions of Tisha B'Av.
This includes observing a 25-hour fast from sundown to nightfall and, during evening services, sitting on the floor in semi-darkness reading the book of Eicha - Lamentations - and other kinot, or elegies, which also are read the following day.
"But we can't just go through the motions. We have to contextualize it, to ask, 'What are we actually doing? What does it mean to commemorate this event right now in this way?'" Brous says. "The problem now is we have only the shell of the ritual without the essence."
The summer camp experience often provides more context.
At Camp Ramah of California, located in the Ojai Valley north of Los Angeles, campers and staff gather together on Tisha B'Av eve in the outdoor synagogue, the area illuminated by dim candlelight. They sit on the ground as mourners and listen as Eicha is read.
Afterwards, before the campers leave for their tents, Rabbi Daniel Greyber, executive director of Camp Ramah of California and the Zimmer Conference Center, urges them not to speak to one another.
"I want to create an awareness for them of how we use words and the ways in which they're hurtful to one another," says Greyber. "I want to bring alive what it feels like to hate each other so much that we can't even speak to one another and how destructive this was for the Jewish people."
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